As long as fuel remains comparatively cheap, people will not change their behavior and drive more efficient vehicles, they will always go for the most bang for the buck. Raise the pump price of fuel and people will use less.

We had contracted with Lotus to build us a Vectra with custom engine management system so that we could manipulate the torque output. I had already spent several weeks in Arvidsjaur before heading to Hethel to help finish the preparations of the Vectra. We took a Ferry from Felixstowe, England to Brugge in Belgium and then raced across through the Netherlands and Germany to catch another ferry from Keil to Gottenborg. 

From the home of Volvo we trekked east to Uppsala but unfortunately our schedule didn't allow for a side-trip to Stockholm like +Jonny Lieberman and Justin Bell. After a night in Uppsala we followed the coast up to Lulea before turning back inland to our destination in Arvidsjaur about 60 miles south of the Arctic circle. 

Through the entire trip I drove the Saab while Steve commanded the Vectra, and finished calibrating the new engine management system. Like the MT boys, we ate most of our meals on the road at gas stations and canteens. Steve spent about a week in Arvidsjaur fine tuning the Vectra before flying home to England. I stayed there for another 2 months before finally heading south in mid-April. 

That was a pretty surreal winter, having in arrived in Arvidsjaur on January 4 when the daylight lasted about 20 minutes and the sun barely came above the horizon. By the time I left, the sun was coming up about 4:30am and it didn't really get dark until about 10pm.

It was however a very productive winter and we had the beginnings of a workable system. I also learned some important stuff and developed what a rudimentary stability control system using just the wheel speed sensors. Without accelerometers and yaw rate sensors, it was wasn't nearly robust enough to use in production but elements of it would later be incorporated into a turn detection system for our ABS.

Anyone familiar with old pre-electronics carbureted engines knows that getting one to work well across a wide range of operating conditions and speeds is not a trivial matter. Thanks to computer brains today's engines mostly operate smoothly and seamlessly from a 600 rpm idle up to 7,000 rpm and beyond. 

The dynamics of moving air and fuel, combusting it and then getting the exhaust out takes a lot of very careful engineering and mechanical systems have severe limitations one of which is the valve-train. That's why engineers have been working to eliminate the camshaft from that process. They've already developed mechanisms to adjust the timing and lift but there is only so much when the valve stem/lifter has to ride up and over the bumps on the cams. 

Engineers everywhere have been developing actuation systems that can individually manage each valve and provide the optimum lift and duration for each cylinder. Lotus had an electromagnetic system in the early-1990s. Unfortunately while these systems actually work, the actuators also require a lot of power to run. That means the benefits of improved valve control are lost. Sooner or later however, someone will develop a system that is more efficient. I don't know if this pneumatic system that Koenigsegg is developing is the one, but it's an interesting video. 

Reshared post from +Tim O’Reilly

Carl Malamud asks a key question that demands an answer in a democracy: do we have the right to read laws that govern us, or can we be required to pay to read them? 

Reshared post from +Jeff Jarvis

The beta car.

I can't wait to try this out, but we will have a lot of new questions to answer about how and where we use cameras.

Reshared post from +Dan Gillmor

Here's Germany's latest attempt to turn the Internet into a (slightly) advanced form of cable television. I'm glad to see that Google is having none if it.